


Paint Me The Color of You

by exactly13percent (superagentwolf)



Series: The AU Court [8]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Andrew Minyard Has Feelings, M/M, One Shot, Protective Neil Josten, basically two short one-shots that are connected, times two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-06
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-06-06 01:54:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15184187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superagentwolf/pseuds/exactly13percent
Summary: Andreil Week 2018|Day 5: Colors, Soulmate, Stadium lights-Sound is supposed to be the language of love.Neil has never heard his soulmate. Never. Except he sees blue all the time, and then he meets Andrew and the entire world turns to color.





	Paint Me The Color of You

“Not fast enough.”

“For who?” Wymack asks. There is exasperation written across his face when he looks at Kevin.

Neil breathes in, out. Watches the fog form in the air before him. He feels heavy and hot. His limbs won’t move even if he tells them to.

“Me,” Kevin says.

Wymack opens his mouth to complain, but Neil straightens and holds his racquet up. “Again,” he demands.

Kevin looks him in the eye and throws another ball.

* * *

He gets used to hearing about Kevin’s story. How his soulmate turned out to be something awful—how the sound had not been sweet or peaceful, but violent. How Riko had been such a perfect antithesis to Kevin that they had been destructive.

How Tetsuji had played on their natural dispositions and tugged at their bond until it snapped like a taught string under his prying fingers.

Neil gets tired of hearing the stories.

He wants to have sympathy for Kevin. He has empathy—a little—but not what he needs to say that Kevin has had the worst. Because Kevin changed. He changed, and his soul shifted. His tie to Riko broke and he may have been left with no music, but that was better than a bad song.

It was better than color, instead.

Neil isn’t like anyone else. He doesn’t hear the softness of violin, or the richness of a piano. There is no synth-pop for him or an operatic scream. He has no melody or flavor or any music at all.

No music. No soulmate.

Or so it usually goes. Because Neil has no clue what color means, instead.

He spends a lot of time trying to figure out how he can see color—or whatever it is that happens, when he thinks of his soulmate or tries to capture the feeling. All Neil knows is the way color seems to coalesce, and he’s floating in a haze of blue.

Blue, with no way to tell up from down.

Neil keeps the colors to himself and tries to think that it’s fine. That it doesn’t mean anything for him to have color instead of sound.

He tries, but it doesn’t quite work.

* * *

Andrew doesn’t know what the fuck is up, but the color doesn’t change anymore.

It used to, for years. He thought it was something else, but it happened long after he left and was with the Foxes, instead. The colors would shift regularly—maybe once a year, with tiny fluctuations between any given day—and Andrew couldn’t keep up.

He always thought something was fucked about him. He knew something was fucked.

He’s just not sure what that is.

Andrew finds, the summer before Kevin’s first year with the Foxes, that the color stays the same. There is nothing different about it, anymore. Andrew sits at his desk to memorize his book and he feels a wash of earthy color roll over him. He can almost see it. Like grave dirt, thrown over a coffin. Andrew closes his eyes and it doesn’t go away. The color is still there, before his eyes.

He doesn’t really have a choice.

* * *

When soulmates meet, Matt says proudly, they hear what the song is supposed to be. They hear the entire thing—the harmony—and it’s perfect.

Neil takes his word for it.

Matt and Dan are a symphony on their own. They are love and support. Neil thinks he could imagine what their song sounds like. Sometimes, he wishes he could hear it. He thinks it would calm him and take him someplace else. Somewhere it doesn’t hurt so much.

Neil doesn’t know what will happen to him. He only knows that he sees a soft blue that drags him down somewhere quiet and slow, and he’s never sure whether giving in will kill him or not. He can’t imagine letting go and finding something there to hold him, against the odds and the danger.

“I hope it isn’t a sad song,” Nicky says one night. He holds Neil to his chest, and Nicky’s head rests on Neil’s. “You don’t need a sad song.”

He doesn’t, but need and reality are two different things. Neil doesn’t say that. Instead, he says, “It’s not a sad song,” and it’s only a half-lie.

The color has always seemed melancholy to him, but it’s not a song. It never will be.

* * *

Neil throws a ball across the court to the blinding pain of electric blue.

His color has almost never changed. It only does on rare occasions, and when it does, it’s painful. The blue goes from a sleepy blue to something much sharper. The crackling static burns him and he wants to close his eyes, but he can’t look away from it. The blue is all he sees; all that’s in his eyesight.

The color burns everything and Neil falls to his knees. He digs his hands into his eyes and groans.

He’s glad Kevin isn’t there. He doesn’t want to explain.

* * *

Andrew notices the color disappear, sometimes. It goes away completely—it is sucked into nothing.

He thinks, most times, that it’s done. That his soulmate—if that is the thing—has died. That he’s been left alone at last and there’s nothing for him to reach for.

Andrew contemplates the emptiness and finds himself unfortunately unwilling to face it alone. It threatens to consume him and he doesn’t want the void that’s there.

The color is gone and he does everything he can to recall it. He tries to sample the color while it’s there, but he can never quite get it. His eyes can’t, either.

So, Andrew waits when the color goes. He waits and it always comes back, but he thinks of the day it won’t. He thinks maybe he wants it to never come.

* * *

“Andrew,” Kevin says. “Aaron’s brother.”

“Twin,” Neil corrects. He remembers that much, from his conversations with Aaron. They’re lab partners, even if they’re not extremely close. Neil blames pairing up in class and being antisocial.

Kevin shrugs. Neil ties his laces tighter and waits for Wymack to hit the lights.

The stadium bursts to life for practice and Neil shifts on his feet. He is waiting for this.

Except Andrew walks in and Neil almost falls to his knees.

He can see. _See._

Everything is sharper. The blue is more blue, Kevin is clear as day—Neil feels like he wants to cry, or maybe scream. He could be crazy. All he knows is that things have changed. He’s not just seeing color as it is; he’s seeing the purest of it.

He’s overwhelmed.

Andrew is quiet. He looks at Neil while the color snap into place and doesn’t say a single thing.

* * *

Andrew wants to know. He wants to know more—everything—and he pulls himself away.

He shouldn’t be so interested. Even if he saw Neil and the colors of the world started to make sense.

Andrew ignores the color. He ignores the change, but Neil won’t be ignored. He is firmly in the Foxes, and there is no taking him out. Andrew only manages to keep an eye on him, until the time comes that they are alone. That Andrew watches Neil from across the roof, while the sky swirls with as many colors as are in his mind.

“Why?” Andrew asks. “You changed.”

“I always changed,” Neil says. He is breathless. Quiet. “I’m not changing anymore.”

“Why should I believe you?”

“I won’t,” Neil says again. He leans forward a little.

It should not feel so right. Andrew should not look into Neil’s eyes and feel like he’s falling into the earth; like there is nothing but the quiet softness of brown-green.

But he does.

He does, and he wonders why the hell he ended up like this. How music became color, and why Neil’s eyes are the only thing he can see sometimes, even when he tries to close his eyes and shut the color out.

“That’s why,” Neil whispers.

Andrew thinks at first that he said something out loud, but then he realizes Neil is staring into his eyes. He’s leaning in to look, like he can find something, and Andrew realizes they are the same. Neil isn’t hearing some sort of music. He’s not listening to the next Beethoven or some shitty pop song from the radio.

He is looking into Andrew’s eyes, and he is looking at the colors.

“It shouldn’t be,” Andrew says. He should tell Neil, you shouldn’t tie your life to a color. To a person’s eyes.

But he looks at Neil and he sees the pain and survival and life. He sees the road he saw in color, with all its changes, before they came to this green-brown. And he realizes that where Neil’s eyes are blue, his own are hazel.

They have always been looking into each other’s eyes. Even when Neil’s changed.

“This can’t be wrong,” Neil says. He is quiet but firm, and he leans closer to Andrew. He might fall off the roof if he’s not careful. “It can’t be. Not when I can see, for the first time. Not when I can feel—”

Andrew cuts him off. He raises a hand and feels the ghost of Neil’s breath on his skin. He doesn’t touch, but he wants to. He wants to so badly he hates it. Andrew pauses and Neil holds himself still.

“Not all at once,” Andrew says. “Not now.”

Neil watches him and nods. He waits for the hand to drop and then he pulls his knees up to his chest. Before they leave the roof, Neil speaks softly. “I like the world in color. It all looks better, with you.”

**Author's Note:**

> I...went to AX and was hella fucking tired after I got back. I am, exhausted, and things are still shit but at least I have art to make me happier??  
> Thank you so much to everyone following my fics and this week. I'm really glad to have you all in the comments and as readers.


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